I just got off the phone with the information desk at Trudeau Airport. Unless the weather does something unexpected, the first landing of the Airbus A380 will take place on Runway 24R at 12h30 tomorrow afternoon.

Contrail Aviation Photography has an excellent spotting guide for YUL. I’ll probably be at spot number 9 since I’m hoping to include the Mont Royal and the Oratory in the background. I’m not sure about the direction of the light though so I’ll do a quick scouting run and report back in a few hours.

Update I checked out the various spots at about 12h30. As you can see in the first two images, you can get a pretty good view from Chemin St-Francois but the sun will unfortunately be illuminating the left side of the airplane. You won’t be able to see the actual touchdown but the plane should emerge from behind a group of buildings with the front wheel still in the air.

The illumination from the end of Pitfield is marginally better since you might be able to position yourself to capture the well-illuminated left side. A note of warning, bring your fastest lens. Even at 1/200 sec, many of my side shots came out fuzzy.

Ultimately I found another spot that may not as close as those two but it should provide me with an interesting foreground. Where? I’m not telling. You can probably guess that the whole area will be an absolute madhouse come tomorrow.

Update II Can anybody confirm that planes are indeed coming in from the East this morning?

As a response to the anti-immigrant sentiments expressed at the “reasonable accommodation” hearings, Université de Montréal doctoral student Caroline Allard has written an open letter which she invites “Québécois de souche” to sign. An excerpt from the English translation:

We are preoccupied with the fact some testimony before the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, testimony that is intolerant and harsh toward cultural minorities, could be interpreted as reflecting the opinion of a majority of so-called old-stock francophones. We think, rather, that this testimony, which caricatures the practices of other cultures, reveals a profound ignorance of the reality of people from different cultural communities. What’s more, this ignorance feeds a close-mindedness about the connections that it is possible to make among Quebecers, old and new. We want to make clear our openness to cultural communities and to dissociate ourselves clearly from some of what has been said before the commission. Just because some things were said in public does not, we insist, mean they represent the state of mind of the majority of “old-stock” Quebecers.

The letter currently has 3076 signatures and will be formally presented to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in several weeks time. The original French text is available at contrelintolerance.blogspot.com; an English translation was published in Friday’s Montreal Gazette and can be found here. To add your signature to the letter, click here.

The family of metroblogs is highlighting ways to spend $20 in each city. Click the links to other cities and read all about it. Here, we are talking Canadian dollars which are trading pretty high. $20 CAD = $21.40 US. To get things kicked off on the Montreal metblog:

How to eat lunch out for a week on $20. Or, the secret locations of the $4 lunch.(more…)

Once again, the brown fecal matter is impacting the rotary cooling device in Pakistan. In case you haven’t heard the news yet, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule and the government is clamping down on television and radio stations.

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